The “Videos on Flickr” debate

So Flickr proudly rolled out its new function yesterday – video capability. So where did that come from? And was there any demand for it?

I spend quite a lot of time reading comments and group discussions on Flickr, and don’t remember once reading anything that would suggest any demand for video.

I can look at a page of thumbnails and decide instantly if any are aesthetically pleasing and click on them. With a video, you don’t know if it’s any good until you’ve watched the whole thing. It’s not what I want from Flickr, or what I thought I was paying for, and I don’t want to get involved, but there currently isn’t any option to opt out.

Imagine you go to your favourite club, that plays your favourite kind of music, and is in your opinion the best such club out there. You turn up one time, and suddenly the DJ’s started playing a completely different genre of music that you’ve no interest in, and can’t dance to. And it’s not being played in another room, that you could simpy ignore. It’s being played in between all the dance tunes. The dancers would vote with their feet, and not in a good way.

Why would an enterprise want to dilute its prestige in such a way? Why be willing to throw away what its paying users had created without any consultation or warning?

There are many things Flickr could’ve done to make improvements to the Flickr experience. But adding video isn’t one of them.